Nichols and Wise's _Literary
Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century_, i. 33, ii. 105.]

CHAPTER IV

1844-46

The year 1844 marks an important epoch in the life of Mrs. Browning.
It was in this year that, as a result of the publication of her two
volumes of 'Poems,' she won her general and popular recognition as a
poetess whose rank was with the foremost of living writers. It was six
years since she had published a volume of verse; and in the meanwhile
she had been gaining strength and literary experience. She had tried
her wings in the pages of popular periodicals. She had profited by
the criticisms on her earlier work, and by intercourse with men of
letters; and though her defects in literary art were by no means
purged away, yet the flights of her inspiration were stronger and
more assured. The result is that, although the volumes of 1844 do not
contain absolutely her best work--no one with the 'Sonnets from the
Portuguese' in his mind can affirm so much as that--they contain that
which has been most generally popular, and which won her the position
which for the rest of her life she held in popular estimation among
the leaders of English poetry.

The principal poem in these two volumes is the 'Drama of Exile.' Of
the genesis of this work, Miss Barrett gives the following account in
a letter to Home, dated December 28 1843:

'A volume full of manuscripts had been ready for more than a year,
when suddenly, a short time ago, when I fancied I had no heavier work
than to make copy and corrections, I fell upon a fragment of a sort
of masque on "The First Day's Exile from Eden"--or rather it fell upon
me, and beset me till I would finish it.'[91]

[Footnote 91: _Letters to R.H. Home_, ii. 146.]

At one time it was intended to use its name as the title to the two
volumes; but this design was abandoned, and they appeared under the
simple description of 'Poems, by Elizabeth Barrett Barrett.' The
'Vision of Poets' comes next in length to the 'Drama'; and among the
shorter pieces were several which rank among her best work, 'The Cry
of the Children,' 'Wine of Cyprus,' 'The Dead Pan,' 'Bertha in the
Lane,' 'Crowned and Buried,' 'The Mourning Mother,' and 'The Sleep,'
together with such popular favourites as 'Lady Geraldine's Courtship,'
'The Romaunt of the Page,' and 'The Rhyme of the Duchess May.' Since
the publication of 'The Seraphim' volume, the new era of poetry had
developed itself to a notable extent. Tennys